CMS Howlz Principal’s Monthly Newsletter

Student Spotlight – Madeline Hoyt

This month, I’m actually highlighting a former student. Madeline returned to CMS over the summer to paint some incredible murals in our diamond bathrooms. We know the bathrooms, and the physical space in general, have not been as inviting to students as they could be. There was also some vandalism and negative behavior in that area last year. Research shows that when students are more proud of the physical space, they are more likely to respect it. Madeline came by, walked through the school, and built off of the student banners we have around the building that are themed around post-high school goals. She wanted to put a fantastical spin on students’ futures. Check out her bio here and the photos below of her work:

Madeline Hoyt is an artist and nursing student at BYU where she works as an illustrator and research assistant for Dr. Corinna Trujillo Tanner, professor of the college of nursing. She is a two time winner of the Utah Senate visual arts competition, and Timpview high school’s 2022 visual art sterling scholar. Madeline attended Centennial MS in 2018 where she thoroughly enjoyed her art and current world events class. She is passionate about healing people physically, emotionally, and spiritually, which she strives to do both in nursing school and through the art she creates. If you want to see more of her artwork, you can visit her Instagram at: @madeline_h_art.

Teacher Feature – Tiffany Chandler

Tiffany is now our instructional coach and works hard every day to share her talent for teaching. Some of you may remember her as a history and Current World Issues teacher. Her class was always a favorite among the students, and she has been a great resource for our teachers. She works with all teachers, but especially with those who are new to the profession. She is a magician with all things Google Suite, has an adorable family, and is passionate about her work. We are lucky to have her!

August Highlights

Welcome Back to school! We had a red carpet welcome for our 7th graders and brought back a 7th grade day. This is the first time we have done that in years, and it went really well. It seemed to help everyone start on a positive note.

Principal’s Message

Welcome to the 2023-2024 school year! We are so happy to have your students back in the building. It has been fun to meet our new 7th graders and to see our 8th graders again. We are making some changes this year.

First, we added a 7th grade day to start the year. We felt it was a huge success! Students were given tours around the building, learned how to navigate lunch and bell schedules, and were introduced to middle school.

We also changed PACK. We will have it every Monday-Thursday until Labor Day, but after that, it will only be held on Mondays. We felt it was more beneficial to add that time back into class instructional time. This does add some changes to the bell schedule, but we wanted a time to share school expectations, announcements, surveys, etc., while also making sure no instructional time was wasted. There may be some added PACK days throughout the year for things like assemblies or performing arts rehearsals. Those will be announced and emailed out when they come up.

We have new teachers and some have moved to new classrooms. This has been a surprise to some of our 8th graders, but we have a fantastic faculty.

We added a fourth lunch line. This year, there will be a main entree, “favorites” line, Asian line, and pizza line every day. This gives our students even more options to choose from. The favorites line includes things like spicy chicken sandwiches, grilled cheese, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, and more!

Most students now have English and math every day instead of every other day. We noticed a decline in our math and English scores, and over half the student body was below grade level on reading. As a result, we felt those core subjects had to be prioritized. This is especially important after all of the missed instruction due to Covid. It will provide our students with the time to fill in some of those gaps.

Our tardy policy is similar but has changed slightly. We have asked teachers to reach out to parents when tardies become a chronic issue, and we are now counting first period tardies. Please encourage your students to be in class on time. Every minute of class is important! We standardized the definition of “tardy” across the board. Every teacher has been asked to mark students present and on time if they are through the door. Last year, some teachers had their own policies requiring students to be in seats, log in to computers, have specific items out, etc. We felt it was best to be consistent so students would know the expectation is the same in every class, ever period.

Lastly, we are utilizing citizenship grades this year. Teachers have been asked to add these each quarter to represent how well students are exemplifying our school expectations in class. Parent teacher conferences are a great time to get more information from teachers on these grades. You can also email a teacher or message them through Canvas at any time if you have questions or concerns.

I will continue to send written newsletters monthly. I have also started posting weekly videos to social media. They have been on the school pages, but I recently started my own Principal Taylor pages on Facebook and Instagram where I will be posting content moving forward. Those have been shared on our school’s pages and are included at the bottom of this message. Feel free to follow me there for shorter looks into happenings here at CMS!

Thank you for your continued support and trust. As always, I am happy to hear from you! Please email, call, or set an appointment to meet in person at any time. That is how I learn and grow, and how we can best improve the experience at Centennial.

Sincerely,

Brook Taylor